The Lost City of Hearthome
by Guardian54
Summary: Several millenia before the First War, on the east coast of Kalimdor, there was a flourishing city: Hearthome. With innovative tactics and never-before-seen technology, it was a jewel of humanity. And without warning, it disappeared. This is its story. WILL REWRITE FIRST FEW CHAPS WHEN I ACTUALLY GET TO WRITING THIS THING.
1. A Damned Long Time Ago

A/N: Mastermind4892, if you are not happy with the history I'm building here, sorry, but remember that I don't like using too many different timelines, I looked at WOW timeline and lore and found this solution so here we go… By the way, you nagged me into writing this, and yes there will be a second chapter to cover a few more important details. The "NOW" is several thousand years prior to the events of WarCraft games and WOW.

* * *

><p>Chapter 1: A Damned Long Time Ago, In a Galaxy Right the Fuck Here<p>

_Past, Circa 98,000 BCE, On a Habitable-zone planet in the Milky Way…_

The denizens of the vast, wild land, of the entire planet that would later be known as Azeroth, watched as stars glittered far above them, as beams of light connected the dots in the heavens as if in some child's game. Some dots, after being linked with others, would flare brighter before slowly fading out, while some became glowing, shooting stars that etched across the sky before disappearing over the horizon, in some cases with noticeable tremors when they landed close to observers.

Later explorers would find nothing of use in the wreckage, what little actually landed on land, as they would be thoroughly slagged. Those that weren't already melted beyond recognition and possible use by salvagers from later civilizations often became the targets of great pillars of destructive light raining down from above.

The beasts and few sentient natives of the world, the dragons in particular, watched curiously from mid-air, dodging anything that looked like it could fall too close to them for now in case one of those beams hit THEM instead. They detected no major magical, or as some would say, psychic/psionic, aura about the destruction, and that made them curious…

That was when the curiosity of many dragons in science instead of magic began.

Of course, there was the matter that any parts that landed with auras of life were immediately incinerated. It made the locals wonder… and give the things a wide berth so they could survive.

* * *

><p><em>Past, Circa 97,000 BCE,<em>

A thousand years ago stars had shone above the world like twinkling fireflies…

Five hundred years ago the first fireflies living on Azeroth were discovered and histories begun to be written with the above sort of description…

Three hundred years ago mighty metallic titans flew down from the heavens. They had explained to the locals that they meant no harm, merely showed them images of monstrosities, much resembling black squid, sending out more monsters. The titans had explained through pictographs to the leaders of the creatures sentient and not-so-sentient alike of the world, the dragons, that the foul beasts (well, they didn't call them that, but history always moulds itself…) seeked to destroy and devour life and its energies.

At least that was the conclusion the dragons got from the information given, the titans had answered along the lines of shrugging and responding "Something like that."

The titans did much to help the denizens of the planet, helping move tectonic plates to create more habitable land and productive ocean surface alike, keeping the atmosphere balanced… Of course the creatures did not truly understand this, merely sought to, however they respected and revered the metallic titans for what they did for them.

* * *

><p><em>Past, Circa 97,300 BCE<em>

The locals heard from the Titans tales of an unnamed evil, which faced and fought the Titans' enemies countless times over unimaginable distances of front lines… but turned corrupt. The Titans called the entity "Mendicant Bias". However, the recorders of history then present on the planet noted the similarities to a being they had in legends, a being called Sargeras. The enemies the Titans mentioned, two distinct types, something regarding Infected and Pure Forms, were speculated to be the Eredar and Nathrezim of lore used to frighten children…

The fact that the two species assignments never died didn't help, as according to the Titans these Infected and Pure Forms technically did not die spiritually. The titans mostly ignored the denizens as they worked away on various things around the world, things which the denizens asked about but did not receive answers for. One such installation was a gigantic circular lake many miles across, containing vast amounts of energy… A second such installation was a much smaller pool infused with a much smaller amount of psychic energy to the east-northeast of the first.

The locals called the first the Well of Eternity when the titans told them it would protect them always from a cataclysmic event that could soon be upon them, and the second was named the Second Well of Eternity or to some the Minor Well of Eternity.

* * *

><p><em>Future, February 5, 3872, 262144 Light-Years from Center of Milky Way<em>

"…But the one that destroyed me long ago, in the upper atmosphere of a world far distant from here, was an implement far cruder than I. My weakness was capacity—unintentional though it was!—to choose…"

* * *

><p><em>Past, Circa 97,000 BCE onward…<em>

The final flashes above them went silent as one side won over the other, clearly it was the Titans' side, as they raised their arms, what metallic limbs as could be called such, to celebrate. But then they stopped abruptly, their eyes brightening in sudden fear and understanding as a dull brightness crossed the sky, as the vast continent trembled slightly with the force of some impact. The sky seemed to brighten as if it was day, and the Well of Eternity, both Wells, surged with energy.

…And in a moment, just a moment… it was all over.

A whole galaxy emptied of sentience, but for a few glittering gems in an instant that could have and might as well have lasted some modest guise of eternity…

At least, that was what the titans said, according to them, the life-forms on this particular planet were still safe, the Second Well had extended the first's influence to the west far enough to protect the westernmost reaches of the continent the local, i.e. the dragons and the budding sentience's of dwarves and gnomes, called Kalimdor. It was the only continent on Azeroth, a super-continent of sorts.

The leader of the titans, a massive grey, white and gold-plated quadruped being, chose to invest in the five main dragon flights (subspecies) to guard the world while he went away to shepherd another world. His remark was that "Well now that this place is okay I got to get back to my main job… Earth Two". No one knows why he referred to a world as dirt, perhaps in the future someone would.

But for now the verdant world of life spun on in the dark void of space… unlike so many others that had been left unshielded, the world spun on. It had been as a joke that the leader of the titans had called the world "Azeroth" once he learnt of the natives' name for its main continent (Kalimdor). He had thought it funny that it coincided with the video game series that had been published two centuries before his creators entered the past and founded their civilization. He had thought it to be the multiverse's way of playing a joke.

Unfortunately, though neither the planet nor he knew it at the time, he had been right. However, he did extract some good laughs and facepalms when the events in the games started coming to pass… as well as shock at how the future events played out even beyond the times when the games had been released. Then again, with the help he had when it actually came to making said games back at the correct time before their release in the cyclic timeline (around year 2000 CE), with an army of those capable of seeing into the future and all, maybe that wasn't so surprising… that he should have been right.

* * *

><p><em>10,000 Years Later… Circa 87,000 BCE<em>

The leader titan, who called himself "Monitor", had returned for a check-up, handing off a battered shipload of humanoids to the world, landing the ship near the Well of Eternity before leaving the battered, disoriented survivors of a Global Thermonuclear War, which they had termed the Winter War, behind. He had worried that their species would not survive. There had been no news from the rest of the Titans' civilization after that cataclysm so, so many years ago, the Monitor feared that these may need to be relied on to battle the evil that would return over and over again.

In a way, he was right. After deteriorating over millennia to nearly feral lifestyles after their domesticated creatures all died mysteriously, the creatures built their first towns on the shores of the Well of Eternity, and called themselves the Children of the Stars… the Kaldorei.

* * *

><p><em>Elsewhere, Circa 21,000 BCE<em>

The two local sentient species (evolving on separate continents and somehow being in balance) called the planet Draenor. However, that was irrelevant as a dark shape approached it, curious about its inhabitants and why they had been protected like a handful of others. Nazara sent her scan data back to her superior before receiving the reply of "Minions could be useful and are stronger than the others, assimilate if possible, if not… you know what to do." Nazara had complained that it was worth investigating, how two species could evolve in balance like this, but Harbinger had overruled her, and so she did as she was told. According to the boss, assimilating some weak, useless worlds or species secretly would provide good jump-off points and minions for assaulting more annoying planets or playing around with other weak worlds. She was also instructed to let a salvaged fragment of Mendicant Bias, reprogrammed to the extreme, take charge of this sort of operation, since she was not needed for this.

* * *

><p><em>Azeroth, Circa 9,000 BCE<em>

A local Sub-Monitor, who unlike the Monitor did not have to spend time looking after two worlds, was named Cenarius, he had been promoted from being a creature to demigod-hood. (Well, unknown to him, he was actually the result of a nasty containment breach in a genetic experiment by the Monitor to create a Flood-resistant strain of human beings, but that is beside the point and another story anyhow.) Cenarius was a friendly fellow who helped the humanoid beings, who were basically humans (they were still genetically QUITE compatible…), survive in their new environment and taught the people lots of things about it.

Eventually, the civilization of those who would become known as the Night Elves grew and began to study the mix of psychic, psionic and other energies contained in the Well… and the thread began to unravel…

* * *

><p><em>Azeroth, Circa 6,500 BCE<em>

After the Great Sundering, The Pact of the Emerald Dream was created, but this brought another issue, a VERY, VERY LARGE ISSUE: The High Elves, the former elite of Night Elf society, began to get withdrawal symptoms. They headed eastward over the sea to one of the smaller continents of the world of Azeroth, and there, they founded their own civilization…

* * *

><p><em>Azeroth, Circa 100 CE<em>

The Monitor had been overjoyed when he'd discovered that the once-thought-lost homeworld, Earth, was inhabited by humans, it was excellent, that the timeline cycle would be maintained. The question though was whether or not a back-up would be needed.

The Monitor's conclusion was YES. Multiple back-ups would be excellent, one about the same historical level of development as before and one far more advanced, on Azeroth and Earth Two respectively. Other back-ups, well, he would consider it…

The first humans transported to the world were confused and tribal, It took many years before they united into he first human superpower. But when they did, the world would tremble, but only briefly…

* * *

><p><em>NOW, Central Kalimdor, Azeroth<em>

"You know, prophecy has it that a great Admiral's daughter will found and lead a mighty city on that island one day in the future…" John Shepard stated, looking out southward toward said island from his vantage point on the coast. Of course, Theramore was too far from their location to see directly, but it was the gesture that counted… "The city will be a great capital of a world power comprising many races, an Alliance if you will."

"Whatever… but right now, the only real 'mighty cities' on this blasted continent are Darnassus and your own." Garrus, the hawk-nosed Night Elf sharpshooter, stated simply.

"True, Hearthome seems to be living up to its name, mines to the west, coal to the north, forests all over the place, a good harbour…" John sighed "If only your people would stop trying to stop us from passing through the area, how many skirmishes has it been in the last month?" He asked one of the soldiers who followed him around.

"Uh… four… damn, I'm still getting used to this new calendar system…" Said system divided the precisely 360-day Azeroth Year into 12 months of 30 days each instead of the 15 or so lunar cycles that had been used to measure time.

Hannah Shepard had once been a general, who'd heard of the lands across the sea. Thanks to overcrowding and other issues she'd gotten authorization to expand across the sea to the west. Managing to recruit enough volunteers after heading to the new continent, Kalimdor according to the natives, and returning, she embarked on her voyage across the sea in a large fleet of ships. Miraculously, or perhaps at least partly because of Hannah's insistence on bringing preserved fruits and vegetables in addition to seeds and other food supplies, they all made it… but that was when the woes began.

The locals were NOT friendly to acts that disrupted the natural environment, such as cutting down some large copses of trees so that farm fields could be contiguous and such. That was why Hannah had implemented a doctrine she'd been itching to try in her general days: Elastic Defence. It had managed to reduce friendly casualties to a minimum after the losses the soldiers had sustained in the initial skirmishes, and it had gained them some prisoners in the various outpost forts around the perimeter of the humans' new land claim. Thanks to random inspections and tallying up, the prisoners were reasonably treated.

Or so everyone believed…

* * *

><p><em>Road to Outpost Fort Five, Central Kalimdor, Azeroth<em>

There were seven Outpost Forts, arranged like the times on a clock, in a semicircle starting with the coast and with the center at the new city of Hearthome. This meant that in the semicircle, as outposts One and Seven bordered the sea and had piers nearby going out to the sea, Outpost Five was sixty degrees west of north, as One was due south and Seven was due north of Hearthome City. This one was the one chosen by random lot for this ten-day cycle's inspection.

Each outpost fort was the center of a village as Hannah called them, each perhaps a thousand in population, with the forts garrisoning three hundred soldiers per fort. It was mainly the families nearby and the farmers, but regardless it was a pretty decent arrangement. Though the Night Elves never attacked out in the open, that could change and the forts were built to withstand sieges…

There was also an underground tunnel leading from each fort to Hearthome under the main roads between the installations. As for the location of the semicircular formation… the region would later be known as Durotar, the location of Hearthome marking halfway up its east coast.

Hearthome itself accommodated a good twelve thousand people, who still used the massive metallic ships they had come over the sea with as shipping freighters for goods across the sea and back, usually dispatching three freighters per month. A fishing industry had sprung up almost overnight, though Hannah insisted on putting a quota as to how much they could catch. She had consulted captive Night Elves and asked them to assess the sustainable yield of the fisheries, farms, and so on…

That brought us to the moment earlier, with the tall, hook-nosed Garrus Vakarian. He was a male night elf who'd been let free but opted to take Hannah's offer as an environmental advisor simply because it was odd to see another species pay so much attention to the environment. That was of course not to mention that fact that it was better to tell these guys just how much the environment could handle and watch them listen than to let them run wild.

This inspection however was not at all related to the environment, it was one of those surprise inspections of the troops, though a certain someone was going to be late… "Uncle Sam" as everyone called her (though she pointed out that her job was more akin to a royal babysitter) was starting to get irritated at said someone "Prince James Shepard, we need to get moving…"

"Just a moment, Samara" She was the leading mage of the city, though she deferred to and was totally loyal to his mother. "Now, what were you saying about the potato plague? Have you been practicing crop rotation?" He asked the small crowd of farmers.

Samara sighed, it was good to care and all, but talking to random people about CROP ROTATION? Maybe he should be talking about local mayors and such instead, it was more important to ensure the mayors weren't going rotten than potatoes that the farmers should know how to grow anyways. Sure, she'd wonder too if it was some new and exotic crop, but _potatoes?_ "Prince James, we're going to be late…"

"Well as long as you guys use zoned planting and crop rotation you shouldn't be having these sorts of problems, but we'll get the mages to look at it soon, Samara can help you guys out while I'm doing the inspection, can't you, Samara?"

The mage sighed and nodded "Yes, Prince James, just… be careful."

"Don't worry about it, I can take care of myself." Said Prince threw over his shoulder, walking down the paved road with the few soldiers they'd brought with them. Samara sighed and went back to the rather large gathering of farmers.

"So, what seems to be the problem?"

* * *

><p>AN: A few things other than history will also change, just saying. Also, there are reasons for the city being named Hearthome just like that city in Sinnoh. Garrus… I gave him the closest post the Night Elves would find to a cop without being an actual cop, an environment monitor, with how environmental they are… heh.

* * *

><p><em>Outpost Fort Five, Central Kalimdor, Azeroth<em>

Tali Zorah had given up on getting out of here. It had started when they'd made her go out on patrol again, despite her not possessing any magic (druid) capabilities whatsoever and being a bit of a runt (the typical Night Elf, male or female, was something like 195 centimetres tall, she fell almost twenty centimetres short). The Sentinel party had spotted a band of human soldiers scouting in the north of their settlements, probing into Ashenvale and needless to say and fired warning shots.

Unfortunately one of the humans walked into one of said shots, and a skirmish began. Somehow one of them managed to club her in the head with his sword hilt entirely by bad luck (the dying man had spasmodically thrown it away from him as he went down). That had been heavy enough a strike to disorient her enough to fail in stealth. What followed was half the human party of thirty ganging up on her while the others held off the rest of the Sentinels. She managed to knock out ten of them in a running fight before realizing that they'd forced her into a trap… then taken her down without further casualties. That had been twenty-eight days ago.

Tali did not want to remember the next twenty-eight days. It turned out that even though she'd been striking to maim and not kill, two of the soldiers she'd knocked out of the chase had died of blunt trauma anyways, perhaps working herself harder to try to compensate for lack of magic had been more effective than she thought… In total the skirmish had cost the humans seven soldiers and wounded five more, while her people had probably lost nothing, other than her, a useless, magic-incapable runt. The humans were understandably furious about the attack, but then they started taking extreme measures…

* * *

><p>"Seems everything is in order…" James stated, looking around at one of the supply warehouses after examining the maintenance of the tunnel system, which included defences against the outside AND inside of the tunnels. Then he walked over to the stables and examined the horses' teeth and coats "You might want to wash them a bit more often, but it's alright…" Making his way over to the well, the Prince did what was part of making his family rather different from typical nobles, he drew the bucket up himself before wafting its scent toward his face and nodding approvingly "Smells alright… drink some." He held out a bowl of the water to a random nearby soldier, noting that the ceramic bowl, typical of Hearthome City goods, was quite well-made and the soldiers seemed to have taken good care of it.<p>

"Sire, we do that every day…" The man stopped upon seeing James raise an eyebrow, then brought out his canteen.

"No, this time just pour it into your mouth, you should taste it without it having been in the canteen before." James stated, the canteens were charmed to clean dirty water if it was too dirty, so he wanted to make sure the soldiers knew how maintained their well was. Then again from the pristine colour and normal smell it wasn't bad by any means… it was still better for the man to just drink it, if he got sick, well then they'd learn to maintain their well better.

"Yes sire." The guy just accepted the bowl in his gloved hand and poured it into his mouth waterfall-style. James nodded approvingly, it was standard Hannah Shepard doctrine to not touch it with your mouth if it wasn't assigned to you, and this man remembered that part of his training.

"Now I'm going to wander around for a bit, just get back to your work men…" He waved most of them off as he moved on to the mages' storerooms.

* * *

><p>"What is it now?" Tali growled as the man loomed over her, backing up against the wall as best she could with her hands tied behind her back and legs tied together, knees tied to her chest as well.<p>

"Well there's an inspection going on so I was thinking we could deal with you in a special way…" the mage in question shrugged before taking the lid off a large barrel "Your kind are so nimble that this should be no problem for you, we just need to make sure you don't disrupt anything." He started by shoving a gag in her mouth, which was better than most of the things they'd shoved in there in the past twenty-eight days…

This was one of the men who had been on the scouting party, one of her worst abusers after her capture, sure, she could understand a couple of punches or kicks because his sister had died of her injuries, but he'd gone way further than that. She cursed the fact that they'd slashed so many of her tendons after capturing her, she couldn't even roll out of the way of the sleeping spell… waves of weariness washed over her body as it struck home, within moments her head slumped forward onto her knees in fatigue and she drifted into dreamless—which was almost blissful for her—sleep.

Mages were not renowned for physical strength, so his buddy had to help him put the unconscious Tali in the empty barrel before he put the lid back on. They left the cellar in time to enter the mages' storeroom, directly above that particular cellar, at the same time as an armoured form. One of the other interesting things about the Shepard family was that they valued practical armour despite being technically nobility, so James Shepard had no shoulder pauldron decorations, just smooth, rounded plates to absorb damage and let him slide on them if needed. "What were you two doing down there?"

"Just looking around for some potion supplies, that was all, we got them too." The mage answered.

"Huh, well, that sounds more legit than the last fort I inspected, they were doing last-minute clean-ups of a potion spill, smelled pretty nasty but hey…" James smirked "Well, the potion isn't going to make itself, huh?" He gestured with his head toward the Potion room, which was next door and warded in case anything blew up. It was also termed, by slang, a Laboratory, but that was beside the point.

"Of course, milord." The man nodded before leaving, resuming chatting with his friend, a soldier, about the weather these past days.

"Well let's get a look around… staves, check, potion racks of already-bottled potions, check, amulets… check… potion ingredients… check…" _wait, where are… oh, right, the barrels must be in the cellar or something, let's see, these ones, they're still in stock, good._ James thought as he lifted a few lids and looked in some glass jars. Then he wandered downstairs with his guards following him. _All the barrels seem to be in place and in order… only thing that looks funny is that brown stain on the wall, then again potion ingredient spills aren't exactly rare…_ As per one of his odder hobbies, which was learning to identify potion ingredients, James Shepard tried to identify what it was by sniffing it, after wafting produced no scent. He frowned at that _That smells a bit metallic, iron probably, almost like blood… but I thought the preserved blood for potion ingredients was upstairs? Maybe one of the mages here accidentally cut him or herself?_ He shrugged before noting that the colour meant this was an old stain, and was probably only spared from cleaning by the pot currently half-obscuring it. Shrugging, he walked over to the row of barrels along one wall, uncorking the tops and wafting their scents one by one. _Mistletoe… Cherry Blossoms…_ It was good that only a few knew of this hobby, or it could be embarrassing… Several barrels later James Shepard stiffened abruptly "I can't identify this one, smells relaxing and rather nice though… anyone from the fort garrison around?"

"Yes sir?" One of the soldiers asked, stepping forward, as per his mother's lessons, James caught a flash of nervousness in the man's eyes and his frown deepened.

"Can I open this?"

The man blinked, then facepalmed "Sire, you are one of the Princes, why are you asking?"

James shrugged "Just thought it would be polite, don't want to stumble on someone's secret wine brew and have the obliged to share… because I don't drink." He chuckled before prying the lid off the barrel and looking inside, then he whirled around, hand flying to his tool belt under his cape before flying forward again. With three thuds, the man who'd spoken before found himself bracketed against the storage closet he stood in front of by three screwdrivers from James' Engineering kit. "What the hell do you people DO with prisoners?" The twenty-year-old Prince (who'd been a Prince for exactly two years now) snarled. "I told Mom it might not be such a great idea to build these outpost forts, but she thought the men she personally supervised in training were better than this. You two" He gestured to two of the soldiers he'd brought himself "make sure he doesn't move. You" He glared at the man who was looking down nervously at the metal-and-wood implements sticking out from the back of the cabinet, one on either side of his neck. The third was buried in the wood just under his crotch. "if you are really innocent in this then I'm sorry for that, but if I find out you're guilty of mistreating prisoners… especially Night Elf prisoners… you're getting it, you got me?"

"I only delivered food and water, nothing more!" The man yelped "I didn't even ask for…" he bit his lip "…a turn…" He quieted as James lifted the woman in question out of the barrel, an easy task for the son of one of the more successful generals of humanity, who was now Queen of one of the fastest-growing and most powerful and prosperous cities known on Azeroth.

"What do you mean by 'a turn'?" James muttered as he cut the ropes and let the Night Elf woman free of her bindings before unpinning his cape and wrapping the purple cloth around said night elf, who looked a tad under-dressed for her environment.

Another interesting fact about Hearthome was that most of its material products were fairly inexpensive, though Hannah had put restrictions and tight quotas on exports so as to not "crash the world economy" as she put it. Therefore the purple dye was not as outrageous as in most countries, but most people still opted not to wear it as they didn't want to fall into the habit and get arrested in other cities they could travel to or visit for dressing above their station.

James' eyes suddenly widened as he realized what the lack of panties under the fairly short skirt and lack of a top other than a jacket meant. It was true that he and his brother were both a bit slower to jump to rude thoughts of women than other men of their age but he didn't realize he was THAT slow… "How many times did they…" He gestured vaguely with his free hand while leaning the woman against the other, wrinkling his nose in disgust at the thought.

The man shrugged, knowing you only erred by not reporting it was good for one's state of mind with an angry Prince demanding answers "Probably two or three times a day, usually different groups each time, I didn't always see them, patrols, you know, and she didn't exactly want to talk to me whenever I came by with the food and water, couldn't really blame her."

"I'll believe your claim of innocence when she wakes up and tells me you didn't do anything after she recovers, but if you try to run for it before she can accuse you or pronounce you innocent… you know the consequences." James growled the last part after stating the first half airily. "You others not watching that guy, get me a stretcher while I wake this poor victim up." He rummaged around in his satchel for a moment before retrieving a small bottle of smelling salts and holding it under the woman's nose. While she coughed and spluttered James caught a good look of her face and his eyebrows shot up… she was really damned beautiful… though the absence of facial tattoos was odd for a Night Elf trooper. "Well I'm pretty sure that sleep was magically-induced but we'll get everyone who did this to you."

"Who the hell are you and what the fuck do you want…" Tali did a small double-take as she looked down at the cloth wrapped around her again "Thought you'd stripped me down like those others did, huh…" She snorted "What do you want?"

"I want to uphold the integrity of Hearthome's military, can you stand and walk?" James asked worriedly.

"Heh, wouldn't be possible for you accursed humans to bend me over properly if I couldn't stand, now would it? Not as strong or fast as I used to be but I CAN move on my own." The woman growled, getting up and catching the cloth around her before it could fall, wrapping it around herself like a cloak.

"Good, now…" The two men he'd sent off earlier had arrived with a stretcher ready, but James smiled at them "we won't need the stretcher so fold it up for now, men, one of you carry it, we're calling assembly and this woman is going to identify her attackers, you, go get Samara." He pointed to one of his men who was off immediately. "Sorry, but I don't think the whole garrison was doing it… right?" The woman nodded. "By the way, my name's James Shepard, what's your name?"

"Tali Zorah, I know, not a typical family name but there it is…" She shrugged, her pointed ears twitching slightly. Tali was by this point still mistrustful of the man's promises, but something encouraged her to trust him at least on the account of wanting to keep discipline of the garrison, probably some sort of inspector at least…

"Well I first apologize on the behalf of Hearthome for all the grief the idiots caused you, second, well, let's go sound Assembly and wait for Samara."

When Samara finally arrived, James asked her to cast a truth-checking spell on Tali just in case. Even though something told him to trust this woman anyways, he wouldn't put it past her to have a grudge against those who captured her and accuse that whole party, even the ones who didn't touch her. He attributed the near-instinctive trust to animal attraction, though "Uncle Sam" had just looked at him with knowing and somewhat disturbing eyes and muttered "Hell, it's about time…" under her breath. It was after all a good sign to note that the guy wasn't dead on the inside or gay…

* * *

><p>After arresting and interrogating—with magical aid—the men who'd been involved in the mess, with lots of broken noses and other contusions inflicted by James after they all confessed, knowing it would reduce their sentence slightly to do so, Tali started feeling rather sick. She was also rather vocal in voicing her discomfort and THAT meant James pulled out the umbrella he usually kept on his person and put it up over her to keep her out of the midday sun. Then he lent her his spare water canteen. "Don't worry, it's not poisoned."<p>

She snorted as she took the metal canteen "I'm not stupid, if you'd wanted to kill me you could have done it any time, instead of waiting this long." She took a swig of the water before resuming in identifying every man who had violated her in the past twenty-eight days.

James had the other men he brought, other than the four who were with him in the cellar, cuff the accused and pull them aside to take back to Hearthome for interrogation. A bigger priority was Tali's obvious injuries though, if she was starting to feel them… then this had better be over soon. Thankfully, she finished up just then and the last man was pulled aside just as he was about to just tell her to get on the stretcher and be done with it. "Alright, Tali, that's all?"

"Fifteen not enough for you? Right, that guy you got on the spot in the cellar was the food-delivery guy, didn't really do anything, but…" she shrugged, glaring at the stupid human with hateful eyes.

"No, it's just that you look like you'd collapse if we don't get you some more medical help soon. If you think you can make it to the tunnel terminal in the fort on your own then come on, otherwise, get on the stretcher and we'll carry you there."

"I can walk, dumbass, just cause you guys cut up my leg tendons pretty badly doesn't mean I'm immobilized." She snarled as she pushed past.

"For the record my name is James Shepard, not 'dumbass'."

"Whatever."

* * *

><p>"How do these trams work?" Tali asked in slight wonder as she looked around at the walls of the tunnel, part of the network that radiated from Hearthome. She wondered how the hell this was different from being a prisoner, since it was kind of obvious they were forcing her to come along regardless of the fact that she just wanted to go home…<p>

James shrugged "We've been extracting a green gas from geysers around Hearthome, geysers that seem to self-replenish. Mom terms it 'Vespene Gas', it's used to fuel these trams, and since it self-regenerates in the geysers at a moderate rate it's a sustainable resource." He explained, Hannah was credited with inventing internal combustion engines in the world of Azeroth, though no one had any idea how she'd managed to build this whole network and the cities and towns, and more importantly have them ready for the colonists she'd recruited. Nor did anyone know where she'd gotten the massive metal ships from or how they really worked.

Perhaps, to maintain timeline integrity, it was better that it was so.

"Well it's rather unnatural… but I guess if it's sustainable…" She shrugged vaguely.

James was finding it rather difficult to keep his eyes off Tali's face at the moment "You reacted a lot better than a lot of the Night Elves who've seen this Network. The ultimate power source is the heart of Hearthome, a huge 'reactor' as Mom calls it twenty meters wide and eight meters tall, rounded and glowing softly… The thing is really quite powerful, though like everyone else I don't know where Mom got it from… some of the citizens think she's some manner of deity."

"Whatever."

* * *

><p>AN: Hannah's about to get a rude shock. Reasons for what that reactor is, where Hannah comes from, and what SHE is will be coming later.

REVIEW!


	2. Time Will Tell… And Already Sort Of Has…

A/N: And THIS is why I didn't want to publish this before the event that started THIS particular time-loop occurred in my other fics. However, the main string will not get to this point for some time yet, since the next parts in most of the main strings are somewhat later in timeline and may be affected by changes I need to make to the B5 and SW crosses, the timelines leading up to ME 3 are after all rather flexible until the DLC packs are all over and done with. That will be at least a year after release, after all the most important ME 2 DLC, Arrival, arrived over a year after ME 2, right? And LOTSB was what? Eight or nine months? (IMHO LOTSB was more important than Arrival.)

I'm saying again that this is several thousand years before the WarCraft Games and WOW. It's also several thousand years before the events of SupCom: ME and so on.

* * *

><p>Chapter 2: Time Will Tell… And Already Sort Of Has…<p>

_That Night, Hearthome City, Central Kalimdor, Azeroth_

"Fifteen men raped her repeatedly over a period of twenty-eight days, and the one other guy who knew of it but didn't participate didn't say anything?" Hannah Shepard's well-sculpted face was contorted in a snarl and her eyes seemed to flash orange for just a moment as she hissed at her son indignantly. "I already have sentences in mind, execution for that mage who started it, and twenty-eight years prison, no parole, for the other fourteen men and twenty-eight months for the last man, the non-participant." She held up a hand as her son opened his mouth to protest "I know it might seem a bit harsh to you to punish someone who just kept their mouth shut for doing so James but listen for once. Information is power, knowledge is power, my child, I've taught…" something seemed to flash across her face "…you that since you were born. That man concealed the crime and allowed it to continue for spite at the Night Elves for attacking scout parties that enter their Ashenvale Forest, even though there aren't any real borders between those and the woods right next to them… He let that" She gestured at Tali, who was sleeping with bandages wrapped around parts of her arms and legs, noticeably her wrists and ankles, on the bed in one of the largest and best guest rooms of what was colloquially termed The Palace by the citizens out of habit. "Continue for twenty-eight whole days, multiple times per day. What did you want to do when you saw the rapists?" Mother and son were standing in the doorway as they talked about what sort of sentences they would pass on the men, who had been interrogated already and were scheduled for public announcement in the market square tomorrow. Crime rates were fairly low in Hearthome thanks to an efficient police force and the fact that the city was growing in planned, coordinated manner, with very few unemployed.

"Shred them limb to limb with my scimitars… Screwdrivers would also work for nailing them to the wall by the balls first." James stated simply, making Hannah raise an eyebrow.

"That doesn't sound like you… you sure you're not getting turned to the dark side like… Garrus said about his people's past?" Her son shook his head at the joke, though he missed her hesitation for a moment before the male Night Elf's name, exactly the same as an old friend she had known in the past… or rather distant future. "Well, what's her name?"

"Why are you so interested? I thought you only found Garrus's name relevant and asked after several talks about the environment and stuff…"

"Tell me, just tell me, that woman looks exactly like…" Hannah trailed off and shook her head. _No, it can't be, don't tell me naming these two after my first two sons doomed them to… that… that fate… that fate my first two will most likely beat down but these two have no chance whatsoever to dodge…_

"She said her name was Tali Zorah." James stated simply, then jerked forward in shock and trying to catch his mother as her black-armoured knees buckled for just a moment. Hannah Shepard was said to have never lost her cool, not even when watching whole settlements burning down, put to the torch by raiders. They said she had only stated that she had seem destruction many orders of magnitude greater even before she was a teenager before moving on to relief and rescue operations as well as securing the perimeter.

_No, no, no, NO! Impossible, god damn it, you sadistic universe, you… first this whole time-travel mess, then I find out I basically exist to be a spawn point for past editions of my boys?_ She reflected that at least she figured out exactly how the Forerunners could have existed, but then that was overcome. The crushing knowledge that the past was set and she'd been told that nothing before the generation where she came from, millennia into the future of this time period, had succeeded weighed down on her and suddenly she felt many times older than her actual age. _Interesting… post-Quantum Age humans don't really age after we mature… but I feel old and tired, so damned tired… curse you, universe, curse you…_

"Mom, is something wrong? Talk to me…"

She shook her head "Don't worry about it, go to sleep or do something else, son, I need to think here…"

"Alright, Mom, be careful though…" It didn't need to be said that she had to make sure Tali didn't surprise her or anything.

_I could keep him away from her, but then he'd probably die a virgin, never feeling a real, brilliant spark with anyone else…_ Hannah thought, pulling a quite old but still perfectly maintained helmet out of seemingly nowhere but a softly glowing alcove in her armour's back, an alcove that immediately vanished once she retrieved the desired item. She looked into the matte black visage, tracing her fingers along the almost invisible areas where she knew the lights that displayed facial expressions of the wearer to be. She had never been able to use it in this world she ended up marooned on… marooned in time after that incident, since it would attract too many questions of her power and origins. _He wasn't made for anyone else… damn it, she even looks just like the Tali I remember… no wonder why Joker always called her people Night Elves as a joke whenever we talked with the Fleet. They were pretty confused whenever he did that…_ She smirked at the funny memory of those communications before frowning again. _Could I deny him at least a bit of happiness, knowing that to let him have a few years of happiness will lead to his doom?_ She shook her head and snorted, in this world, love and happiness and stuff was all too short anyways. _Even if I don't let himself walk into death by hanging around and eventually falling for her I have a feeling the universe will either stop me from separating them or doing so will fulfil its sadistic goals anyways… All I can do is make what time they have left as comfortable as I can. Treating Tali myself using my "secret formulas" was a good start._ She smirked as she thought of her medical scanners and first aid, especially medi-gel, delivery systems in her gauntlets. Then her face darkened as she remembered the first days after that incident left her gating into this primitive world… and at least three millennia into the past relative to her previous time.

It had been a shock to her system to be cut off from the Cybran Network, a Network that hadn't been created yet and would not be for over a thousand years at least. Then came the issue of what she would do in the meantime. Obviously, she cut the default link setting so that if she was active at a time the Cybran Network existed she would not damage the timeline, but what else would she do, stranded in the past, unable to change what she knew of history? Her possession of her armour and Armoured Command Unit changed nothing if she couldn't really use it for much. It had been then that she decided to start working on creating a population of humans with decent technology to help fight alongside her kind in the future. Since she could actually decide to do it and start working on it, she figured that meant her actions would not change the timeline as far as she knew.

It was, she figured, a good way to pass time. Interestingly, in addition to the standard natural resources, this was one of those planets where the hydrocarbon deposits had been infiltrated and assimilated by Vespene Spores. They were startlingly similar to the fictional Tiberium when it came to reacting with long-chain hydrocarbons and growing in them. It was also part of why Vespene Gas slowly regenerated over time, since hydrocarbons were constantly being formed under high pressures and temperatures and being assimilated. It had been then that she decided to make this technological advancement line begin with a vespene-based, sustainable tech tree instead of the mass-industrial and wild ways Earth had gone until it had stumbled onto Quantum Tech and saved itself.

Back to the topic of this particular edition of James Shepard, Hannah frowned. Since she couldn't change the past, then no matter what protection and stuff she gave her boys and their destined ones at least two of them, one from each pair, would die anyways. She would definitely provide the best stuff Hearthome's technological standards could possibly muster, but in the end, she knew that one way or another, whether it be from being caught be surprise, or neglecting protection, they would die horribly ever after. _Still, maybe I'll get grandchildren this time… and maybe they'll survive… though I have a nagging feeling I'm forgetting something here, damn, overseeing a city with one's sub-routines can be a hindrance when one is used to Cybran speed of thought…_ All that thinking had taken her a mere moment, but still it was slow for one used to better speeds.

_Right, what species will Liara belong to this time around?_

* * *

><p><em>Same Time, Sub-Continent Azeroth, Azeroth<em>

Liara T'Soni again wondered why her parents had given her such a RIDICULOUS name as she tapped her feet impatiently, waiting for the line to move forward. Sure, it was going faster than the other lines at the other wharfs, but to her she might as well have been standing still. Having been born in Northrend like the rest of her kind, she'd heard of a great general with innovative tactics and other traits rising in the human kingdoms, on the sub-continent of Azeroth. The woman had been said to have worked for no one in particular, just leading a gigantic army that helped settle disputes and repel invaders. No one had any idea how she funded the army in question, other than the fees grateful kings and queens would pay her, so Liara had gotten curious and gone to investigate. The fact that she was only just an adult by her people's standards at just over a hundred years of age didn't faze her whatsoever.

The fact that by the time she was getting annoyed of wandering the human kingdoms, getting hit on by men and even some women, she had just found out Hannah Shepard had built a new city, nay, a new nation, across the Great Sea did faze her. How had she missed that? After all, she had actually heard about it in a tavern when she got tired of hunting her own food and sleeping on the ground. She'd gotten passage on a ship across the Great Sea, a ship operated by Hearthome City's people. According to rumours they were entirely automated and no one piloted them, though emergency navigators were always on-hand among the crews, they'd supposedly never been needed. She could almost believe that, looking up at the towering, angular grey hull that melted into more sleek lines as it approached the waterline. She could see that most of the ship was underwater, which generally meant stability and/or poor ventilation, though the waterline seemed to not move even with the large amounts of cargo offloaded from it (she had watched it for over two hours) by men and women driving strange vehicles that merely made humming noises. Those were a great source of fascination among many, but she chalked it up to magic.

How very wrong she would eventually find herself to be…

Liara T'Soni scratched her awkward head under her hood in irritation. Unlike the rest of her kind, her humanoid form… had a few defects. For one, her scalp, including her skull ridges—those were another defect—was really damned sensitive to touch, and she didn't have ears, annoyingly, but nonetheless men still liked to hit on her. She did not find it amusing… most of the time.

She was shaken from her thoughts as the men at the boarding gate checked her luggage and scanned her with magic to make sure she wasn't carrying explosive substances. Then they told her to follow the signs until she got to her room as indicated on her ticket stub, they'd also told her that the mess hall aka lunchroom could be found by following other signs. She'd answered rather simply with "Understood, sirs."

"If you have more questions, just ring the buzzer in your room by the door." They'd told her before sending her off into the ship. Several checking crews were operating at the same time to speed things along, she noted as she walked in and was immediately met with a small crowd filtering past a large display board. It read "The first number on your ticket stub is your deck number, the ones after the dash are your suite number. Mess Halls can be found by the appropriate arrows on the floor."

"That's a simple and effective system…" Liara noted to herself as she proceeded to her deck, deck five, and found to her amazement that the place was actually well-ventilated through ceiling grates, and that thick, solid glass panes allowed her to see the waters outside her deck. It looked even thick enough to stand up to her claws were she in her original form, or maybe even a breath attack. Then she explored her rooms, discovering the instruction panel next to the _flushing_ toilet and examining the curious invention carefully. After all, her species were known for being relatively academic, it was one of the reasons she suddenly wished she'd realized the founding of Hearthome sooner and booked a spot before the waiting list grew too long, despite the huge grey ships carrying hundreds of people in utmost luxury at a time.

* * *

><p><em>Next Morning, Hearthome City, Central Kalimdor, Azeroth<em>

Tali's eyes opened rather slowly as she tried to shake off the dream of comfortable bedding and fine sheets in favour of facing reality "Hey, how are you doing?" Her eyes shot wide open after that. _It wasn't a dream._ Her mind registered before starting to rejoice, which in turn was just before she realized that she was still in the clutches of humans. She turned her head as she noted the smell of food in the air, meeting a pair of warm brown eyes which she didn't take note of. "Brought you breakfast and stuff… your wounds should be all healed by now, Mum works wonders… wish she'd explain to me how she does it…" She got up off the bed as he backed off, giving her space as she stretched her arms and legs, eyebrows rising as she noted the lack of pain, even her older scars from before her capture were gone… and she didn't feel any pain down there, maybe that had been repaired too? She looked down and her eyebrows formed an angry frown just before she lashed out.

James Shepard's eyes hardened in surprise as he redirected her first chop at his throat with her hand before settling into defending against a flurry of punches, kicks and strikes with pretty much anything else she could manage. "Why are you acting like this?" He shouted at her.

"I'm guessing you changed my clothes, didn't you?" She snarled at him.

"My MOTHER did that!" James shouted back, then his expression softened a little as he continued to defend, noting how little she left herself open if at all to attack. "You fight well, how about we call it quits and you eat breakfast? I'll take you to Mom later, first of all, do you want to see her passing sentence on those bastards or not?"

Tali shook her head as she drew back to a distance she considered safe, both breathing a little heavier than before. _This guy's a much better fighter than typical, makes sense for a nobleman._ "No, I've seen enough of them for a lifetime, and for us Night Elves, that's a damned long time, you know."

"Alright, Samara, ca you go tell Mom not to wait for us? Thanks." James pulled his head back into the room from the doorway "Take your time eating, Tali." James rolled his eyes as she had begun before he could finish. "Sorry it's simple, but Mom said that you probably couldn't handle foods that were too rich, so she's giving you simple, relatively easy to digest foods… what did they feed you?" He wondered aloud upon seeing her eating rate.

"Mostly bread and water, some other foods occasionally to 'keep me healthy', bullshit…" She shook her head as she went back to her sweetened, thick oatmeal and water jug.

"Sorry to hear that…"

"Don't be, you humans… I'm not particularly fond of y'all at the time, you know, so can you please, I don't know, be quiet?"

"You don't talk like other Night Elves I've met before." James observed quietly as she glared at him with a look that said _That's not what I meant by be quiet._ "You seem… unique."

"Bet you say that to all the girls you meet, heh, I think I just made a pun there…" Tali smirked to herself as she gulped some more water from the small jug.

"Not sure what you mean but I don't think it really matters much, anyhow, you'll normally have been let free after lunch, it's what we do with all the captives every ten days, they're let free with whatever they came with and instructed to head back home and not bother us again. Unfortunately your gear was destroyed by the time we found it, so Mom assembled a kit for you, it might take a couple days to familiarize yourself with the new gear, in addition to monitoring your recovery, so it'll at least be another day before we let you go. Sorry about that."

"Whatever." Tali replied, having finished her food and feeling rather full, leaning back in her chair slightly. She looked at the man, _his name is James… right…_ her brain reminded itself, and her eyebrows started to rise again as she noted he was simply looking at her. It was weird, most people tended to look more at her body, especially her butt, even other Night Elves did it. She supposed that was why the few men that were around and not stuck in the stasis of the Emerald Dream were more polite than the women about her inability to summon magic in any way, shape or form. This guy was just looking at her eyes with a perplexed frown.

"What are you raising your eyebrows at?"

"Oh nothing…" Tali snorted and rolled her eyes, thinking _Maybe he's one of those things rumoured to have existed and been given high positions in ancient times, a eunuch… well his voice is too deep for that, but whatever, might as well be one if he's not gawking at me like very other man I've met. Good, at least it means I don't have the urge to throttle him… at least not as badly as the last lot of human men I've seen._ "Can I leave this room?"

He shrugged "I don't see why not, though Mom tasked me to watch over you until you leave."

"Great, just great…" Tali decided not to test her current captor's patience, even though she thought she could probably win in a fight against him, he was armoured, and she was not. He also carried weapons, including a mediocre-sized Warhammer, a nasty pickaxe, and a thick-bladed scimitar that seemed to be designed for hacking as opposed to stabbing and lunging. "That Warhammer doesn't seem as large as Night Elves typically carry, what's with that?" She asked as he led her out of the room.

"It's not a Warhammer, it's just a hammer we use for repairing the underground tram tracks and pounding in large bolts elsewhere." James stated without turning around "And the pickaxe is for digging stuff up, my only real weapons are this scimitar and a few other smaller items. Anyhow, this is the palace backyard. The pool is available for swimming if you wish, but make sure someone's watching you when you go for a dip." He held up a hand as he turned around, before she could start "Mom has specialized swimsuits for people, I believe it's one of her innovations, you are welcome to borrow some from any of the women in the palace. People call it that, but it's more of a mansion than a palace, since we have no real servants, we typically do things ourselves… though with all the gadgets and machines Mom started Hearthome with that's not very difficult at all."

"Your mother founded this city." Tali deadpanned, not quite believing the man but for the luxuries available in his home i.e. the swimming pool and fountain in the backyard. "That means you're a Prince of some sort."

The man nodded and smirked at that "Prince James Shepard of Hearthome at your service."

Tali almost exploded in laughter "You expect me to believe that a PRINCE has nothing better to do than to baby-sit a rape victim until she recovers and can be sent off on her way?"

"Well my twin brother John dropped by during the night, took one look at you and struck an agreement with Mom that he'd handle our paperwork for the next week so long as I get the duty of watching you, but that's not quite the point…"

Tali stopped laughing and snorted derisively "Great, your brother probably thinks I'm tainted or something, is that his problem?"

"No, he says I should get some time off from the hordes of fan-girls that hover around us whenever we send too long out in public dealing with major cases as judges or stuff like that. Strange that I never noticed any… he calls me oblivious but from what I can see he's the one who gets all the fan-girls, and I'm VERY happy about that. They are… irritation to say the least."

"Hah, and I'm not?"

"Nope, not really, it's nice to have someone be so blunt with me."

"Heh, you just like it because it's new to you, mister, it'll die down soon enough… though I still don't believe you're a Prince." She turned around and blinked before rolling her eyes "Watching you put dirty laundry into that machine…" she noted how it was rumbling after he poured in some soap-scented powder and shut the lid as water finished filling up somewhere inside "probably a washing machine of some sort… does not help that impression."

"Mom likes us to be independent, first it cuts down on spies and assassins, and considering how much stuff Mom comes up with all the time counterespionage's a big thing, and second it helps us get into the habit of taking care of ourselves." James replied as he walked away from the laundry machine toward Tali as it began rumbling as it worked. "So, now that I have vacation from my other duties, what do you typically do in your spare time?"

Tali shrugged "Tinker with technology, and yes I know that's highly unusual for my race. Do you guys have everything I was captured with?"

"Yep, it was shipped here this morning, nice arbalest you built…"

"Well I always believed archers should engage at longer ranges than longbows can afford, and more accurately than longbow volleys can do." Tali raised her eyebrows "You call it an arbalest? Well I was going to think of a name, but that sounds okay… even if it's from a human."

"We humans are very diverse, even though we have much shorter lives, we use our time as efficiently as we can. The human childhood is not long enough, unlike your people, to stifle new schools of thought and progress. I do not intend to offend, just stating facts."

Tali glared for quite some time before hissing "…You're right, it's sad but true that you are right. What do you want to do today?"

"I was thinking taking you on a tour of Hearthome City."

"And be among thousands of human men? No thanks, I'm not that stupid."

"…Right, didn't think of that." The young man scratched the back of his head awkwardly. "We'll have guards to protect you though."

Tali snorted "The last time I met human soldiers was hardly a fun experience."

"Female soldiers, Tali, is that better? I mean, what else can we do? Today you're supposed to rest and recover, tomorrow we can do strenuous physical activities such as archery and stuff."

"I would suggest swimming but your lecherous ilk will probably end up gawking." Tali scowled at the thought. "Alright, maybe the tour wouldn't be so bad."

* * *

><p>"What IS this thing?" Tali gawked in wonder as many new arrivals on tours typically did up at the smooth curved slabs of the structure's tall walls and the humming, circulating energy within. The ground itself seemed to be imbued with some manner of pattern around the roughly circular structure that glowed and pulsed with a soft blue-white light and power beyond the imaginings of most newcomers.<p>

Hannah had set up a single Aeon Tier 1 Power Generator, not that she'd ever tell anyone what it was, to form the core of the central square of Hearthome City, and power the city and surrounding countryside's power grid. It was more than enough. She never told anyone specifics about it, and only stated that she'd built it and that it was perfectly reliable. Despite Tier 1 Power Generators only providing 25 energy units per second, it was more than enough for the city. Hell, it was probably enough for the whole continent by late 20th Century Earth energy consumption standards per area. One unit of energy was far more than most people understood it to be, even though shield generators gobbled power, it was because projecting a shield AWAY from the projector cost proportionate to the surface area of the shield. In other words, if the Titan SAB shield wasn't figure-hugging it would consume even less power, while the hemispheres of other shield generators would need to shrink to reduce power consumption.

This power generator was the heart of Hearthome, and Tali was currently gaping, craning her neck up from the base of the structure that she'd finally reached. James was simply smiling at her wondering expression. "It's the power generator that makes up the core of Hearthome City, highly durable, equipped with shielding, and putting out more power than most can imagine." He announced proudly.

Not even James knew that Hearthome was on a separate power grid than Hannah's covert "bases" scattered across the world, mostly in the form of Fatboys, Tempests and CZARs hanging around, typically in groups with one of each (Fatboys only included when near land, Tempests only included in water). There were a few anchorages where Experimentals and T3 naval units could be built, and power plant compounds, but besides that all was mobile and could strike anywhere on Azeroth with firepower completely incomprehensible to the natives within 10 minutes if Hannah commanded it. Of course, she didn't use them when it came to building a reputation for herself in Azeroth (the sub-continent) or Lordaeron, instead using cunning tactics far ahead of these medieval times and adapting to use of magic. It wasn't so different from psychic-type abilities from where and when she came from.

It was actually nice to have a relatively fair fight sometimes instead of what happened when ACUs met any other land-based force. Introducing innovation and the idea of proper tactics to these people piecemeal was also an interesting exercise to conduct while she raised her sons. After some time of this, Hannah had tired of it and decided it would be better to advance technology here, so she came and founded Hearthome, having to actually design and implement her own sea transports since the existing schematics were vastly too advanced to even let the natives really touch. It would be too dangerous, like the Krogan being elevated to space-faring technology before they were ready.

"How does it work?" Tali asked.

"That… it works by drawing in waste energy" that was the best explanation Hannah came up with for entropy to the primitives living on the planet "from another reality, another dimension if you will, and since the laws of physics that forbid waste energy from spontaneously becoming useful energy do not apply at transition it is converted to useful energy. The two realities complement each other, though we are constantly siphoning energy from them, waste energy spills and sloshes if you will between the realities, balancing itself as much as possible, so it will never un out, because it is constantly being formed from useful energy."

"That sounds complex but rather plausible, so chaos is in balance and this thing extracts it from elsewhere like pumping water uphill… but since there is a transition it transforms into order, and chaos will never run out because order is constantly falling into chaos…" Tali mused "Sounds amazing."

"It is, everyone who comes here agrees that this is an amazing piece of technology, it supplies the entire power grid of our city-state with power. Vespene is used only for some mobile platforms like those subways as Mom calls them, and she's going to phase it out in favour of electricity, though the technology will still be retained and greatly evolved. Even the surface trams, streetcars, whatever you call them, run on electricity nowadays." He pointed at one of said streetcars passing through an intersection thanks to the green light being on, next to the milling citizens crossing the streets. The two streetcar tracks occupied the centers of the streets, with huge sidewalks on either side for the crowds. Hannah had managed to persuade (more like subliminal messaging) the people into believing that walking was better than personal transports over relatively short distances, though horses were still used for many circumstances. For example, horses could climb terrain armoured cars could not and were easier to feed than a Vespene Gas Engine.

James explained various things (above included) about the fascinating city to the curious Night Elf as he led her around, though a lot of people grumbled about her kind, they shut up once James was close enough to hear. Tali noted this, as her Night Elf ears were more sensitive than the small ones the humans accompanying her had. She understood it, since her kind were a bit over-sensitive about Ashenvale Forest, but that did not men she liked it. Still, for some reason, she actually obeyed the warning glare James shot her when she hissed at someone who was abnormally rude.

* * *

><p>OMAKE or whatever it's called, just a bit of a glimpse into the distant future that has nothing to really do with this fic but is supposed to be an entertaining idea anyhow:<p>

_The distant future, late 3800s…_

"I don't know whether to be flattered that I'm a boss character or insulted that my health bar is one-eighteenth as long as Thrall's in this game that foretold the future of Azeroth." Jaina Proudmoore grumbled as she participated in another strike to kill her character. Fortunately, players could only Gold Farm her so many times before she is no longer target-able to them, well, at least the game Jaina worked that way…

The real-life blonde in question was busy clicking away and hitting hotkeys as she advanced her female blood elf paladin through the fire and flames toward her target, constantly being healed by the squad's many medics. Though the video conference channel, King Varian Wrynn was chuckling as his Blood Elf Warrior got teleported to a pool of water outside game Jaina's tower… AGAIN. "Jaina, Jaina, just enjoy the game…"

Jaina rolled her eyes as much as she could while still attacking game Jaina "Yeah, gold-farming using the game version of me?"

"Hey, I agreed with you guys coming to kill game me earlier, so why can't we gold-farm you?" Varian shot back. "Even THRALL agreed with playing an alliance character and assassinating his own player character just in the spirit of unity."

Thrall's greenish face, also on the channel, gaped for a moment "…That was the most uncharacteristic thing I've ever heard you say King Varian."

"If you stop laughing, sometimes you just go mad from the insanity of it all, I mean, a two thousand year old _game_ from another WORLD created by a MONITOR who is basically worshipped by us as the Holy LIGHT which is in turn just psychic powers that come with paladin training… A game which predicts everything that has happened to us over these past years… it's just madness. If we had known earlier so much suffering could have been averted… but by the time the Division Commander plunged into the past it was too late to change history in that particular time loop… if we could have known earlier and changed history… Anduin might still have his mother…" Varian muttered rapidly, softly, as his character charged in with another curse on game-Jaina and Thrall's got teleported out for a swim.

"Reminds me of how you saved my ass on Mount Hyjal." Thrall commented to Jaina, trying to change the topic. "Garrosh, how are you liking the game?"

"Boss characters are too difficult to kill…" the male Orc who had naturally been playing as an Orc shaman replied sullenly.

"Obviously, as we're boss characters." Tyrande Whisperwind rolled her silver eyes at the second highest ranking Orc alive "Would you like it if YOU were easy to kill?"

"Well, no…"

* * *

><p>AN: This fic will not be abandoned, despite my focusing on other projects as higher priority for some time to come. It may be updated occasionally however don't expect it to get primary project status anytime soon, at least not before my Hannah Shepard's World War Two alternate history project is done.


	3. It's Not A Dream

A/N: What I just realized after my fifth time hearing the song in as many days is that "Somebody That I Used To Know" by Goyte is just about perfect for the initial reunions with Liara in ME 2. No, I can't believe it, I just did a search with the song title and there aren't any ME fics with it! HOLY SHIT SOMEONE TAKE THE OPPORTUNITY! (I'll have chapters with the lines for the title later in my C&C series, but that's a long way off…)

By the way, the monitor responsible for Azeroth and Earth II are one and the same quadrupedal white/black/gold coloured battle walker. That should tell you exactly what Elune is in this story when I mention her combat platform description. However, the question of her shape-shifting is a problem which shall be covered later when we mention how dragons can turn humanoid if they really want to.

Decided to write my way through this as a break from the C&C universe, updates _may_ be scattered over multiple fics for quite a while, by the way.

* * *

><p>Chapter 3: It's Not A Dream<p>

In recent news, James Shepard had been awarded the job of taking care of Tali Zorah, a young Night Elven woman he'd saved from certain unruly soldiers who'd locked her up and used her for a sex toy (said soldiers had all been hanged). Apparently, discipline at the border outposts under Hearthome City's banner wasn't as good as it should have been. The first day went fine other than there being a hand-to-hand fight before he could convince her to eat some food in the morning. Unfortunately, James was about to be alerted as to exactly why the first day went so smoothly other than the initial punches and chops being thrown at him. He expected something to happen, but the magnitude of the explosion surprised him a bit.

He was in his potions lab in the yard when it happened: A long, keening scream, kept contained inside the Shepard home premises by a soundproofing spell (or so he thought, reality involved some highly sophisticated technology). Shoving the ingredients he'd just diced aside, he wiped his hands on his lab coat, then shucked it and ran back inside the main home he, his brother and their other lived in. He didn't like making potions much, but liked cooking, he also liked preparing ingredients for potions, after all, it was one way to enjoy potion-making and at the same time stay farther away from any potential explosions.

The scream stopped and he heard a sharp, deep inhalation just before he rounded the corner to Tali's new room, formerly one of the three spare bedrooms in the home. "Is something wrong Tali?" He asked, then gave himself a mental slap at the dumb question. Noting the glassy look in her eyes, the dilated pupils, the sweat seeping out of her skin all over her body, and the hyperventilation, he reached out to check if she had a fever of some sort. If she was coming down with something, that could be bad…

It was a Big Mistake.

Tali had woken up in a bed more comfortable to sleep on than she was used to (well, it was stiffer, she always found her bed at home a tad too soft and squishy but her parents hadn't believed her), and tried to figure out where she was. The answer was definitely not the one she'd been expecting, or, for that matter, looking for. Judging by the walls, ceiling and floor of the rather plain room, this was the home of James Shepard, the guy who'd shown her around the "human" city the previous day. That meant only one thing.

It… she didn't even want to think about it… was _not_ a dream like she had been praying it would be for all of yesterday. It had really happened to her. _By Elune… how… what…_ She could feel her mind start cracking and letting the memories of being used as a sex object leak in, the pain, the humiliation, the helplessness. It piled on top of how she'd never belonged in her life. She was always working physically and mentally to try to make up for her lack of any magical affinity whatsoever but was never considered even adequate in comparison to others. She was the runt that always stood out in a crowd because she was so damned short. Now, she was a sex object, to these _humans_…

Well, Tali's mind was tough, so there was no breaking involved, but she did scream as loud as she possibly could in frustration and sheer outrage. She she'd completely emptied her lungs she inhaled deeply, and heard someone coming into her room at a run. It was a man, she could see that, and she started trembling, sweat breaking out all over her body, breathing quickly, so much that she was starting to get light-headed and was seeing a purple blood-coloured tint over everything. He had said something, then frowned at her and reached for her face, no doubt to hit her or something. Well, now that she was not tied down anymore, she was completely finished with men, particularly HUMAN men, judging by his lack of pointed ears and general complexion, black hair, brown eyes and pale skin meant human. (There were Night Elves with pale skin and black hair, but they were rare and still had pointed ears.)

Exactly two thoughts were in Tali's mind as her hands grabbed the man's throat in a vice grip. _Human Male. Terminate Immediately._

James's next sentence was suddenly cut off as Tali's lavender-skinned hands closed around his throat and did their best to crush it and tear it out. Her irises, glowing an angry silver, had contracted beyond what was normal for an indoors environment. With a harsh yank she slammed his head against the headboard of the bed before rolling them over so he was pinned to the ground. As she had done the roll-over in a way that, let her take weight off her legs and move them mid-roll, she landed with her knees on his chest. A quick move by him had prevented her from pinning his arms and instead let her knock his breath out. Her hands shifted into position, one on top of his head and one on his jaw, to snap his neck, but he tried to heave her off, resulting in her punching him in the face before grabbing his head again. However, while she punched him, he had gone for the parts that he knew would actually let him survive, well, the two parts that he could actually reach.

In other words, James nearly crushed Tali's nipples into her chest with two harsh jabs more typical of pressure-point blocking techniques (or, alternatively, punching holes in relatively soft objects). It was the one ace in the hole that would either buy him enough time to actually strike at her real pressure points or to at least throw her off him. Choosing the latter, it gave him enough time to wrestle her off him, her hands had twitched and relaxed (her arms tensed though) momentarily from the sheer pain and the tsunami of bad memories crashing through her system, and that was enough for him to get away from staring death in the face.

He wanted to say _"What the hell is wrong with you, Tali?"_ However, he knew full well what was wrong with her and to move the situation toward something that could possibly be defused he needed to be less confrontational. She was hunched over with her hands, the left a fist and the right a flat palm, in front of her, and she was clearly still beyond reasoning as she was shaking with pain and anger, and he could see the tears that were running down her face. "Tali, what exactly just happened? Why did you try to break my neck?" His mother had warned him that Tali might lash out at him violently, he probably should have taken her word more seriously, ah well, no harm done, well, at least not to him.

The sharp pain in her breasts had woken Tali up from where she had been about to murder him simply for being a human man, but now she was trembling with rage of an entirely different sort. She was at a bit of a loss for words though, what was she supposed to say? _"You know, I actually might have chosen to put up with you from this point onward simply because you were decent yesterday but after those jabs where you_ knew _I was already hurting I decided otherwise"_ sounded incredibly stupid given she knew full well now, looking back on it, that she had been about to kill him and that like everything else he just wanted to live. However, she wasn't about to admit to a human man that she'd gone berserk on waking up. "How _dare_ you stab me with your fingers like that? It fucking hurt like hell, and you know I have many bad memories about being physically abused by you stupid human men…" She growled in a trembling voice, knowing that she was sounding defensive but not caring since she was talking to a human man. Giving him a way out was the most diplomatic solution and the one least likely to result in her death for attacking first, at least, lest likely out of the options she was willing to contemplate, she wasn't going to grovel.

James sighed in relief at her willingness to at least talk, though it sounded like exasperation, and moved into a more relaxed, casual pose "Well, I didn't know anything else that would prevent you from breaking my neck, and personally, I prefer living to being dead. As long as you don't pull anything like that again, we'll call it quits, okay?" Obviously, forgiving would be the right option here, there wasn't really another choice.

"Not quite familiar with the expressions you are using but I accept your terms." She frowned, letting her fists down "I still despise the fact that your mother insists I stay for a few days to recover, I would think going home would do me the most good in that regard."

James shrugged, though he still watched her carefully for any signs of dangerous ire or mad outbursts "Well, you only really should stay for one more day… you can leave tomorrow morning if you'd like. We can take the subway north to get you close to Ashenvale Forest, to your home."

"The sooner the better, I really don't want to be stuck in this human city any longer than I have to be." Tali stated stonily, narrowing her eyes at his leering. "What are you staring at?" He shrugged and she realized she was still in the sleepwear that had been laid out for her. Though it was less revealing than typical Night Elven armour (which worked much better than many would expect), it still probably showed more than humans showed in public from what she'd seen on their tour of the city yesterday. She figured that since his eyes didn't seem to be focused on anything in particular and weren't wandering, it was best to go for another topic instead "And what's the Subway?"

"Underground trains, a form of transportation relying on technology, not magic or creatures" that was only true to an extent (which only Hannah knew of) given Vespene Gas resulted from infection of petroleum deposits by Vespene Spores, which actually worked on an organic version of quantum reactors and left by-products that were extremely high in potential energy. This was the mixture of materials called Vespene Gas… "The only reason we usually still do the traditional horseback riding thing to the outposts for inspections is to let them have a few hours to clean up the place a little more before we actually arrive. Mother said that we will most certainly be changing that, so that inspections are more snap inspections, though she also said she'd move certain assets into position to pre-empt any further breakdowns of discipline. We can send a lot of stuff with you in apology if you'd like, but that would mean someone would have to go with you to help you pilot the heavy truck we'd like to send with your compensation." Unbeknownst to James, the general shape of the standard Hearthome City Truck was actually vaguely ripped off from the APCs used back in the time she came from by a faction called the Terran Dominion, except the gun turret was replaced by a large hatch and it was unarmoured.

(A/N: that should give you a general idea of the shape of the vehicle, not nearly of the colossal proportions most Coalition-made vehicles would be, so they're not expensive to keep running on vespene gas combustion engines alone, unlike Thors which have nuclear reactors to power them.)

Tali laughed bitterly "You think I could ever personally be compensated for that? Well, I'll take what I can get, if I manage to bring something home that's useful maybe people will actually stop passing over me for everything because I'm so damned tiny!" She wasn't weaker in physical strength than anyone else though, and in fact was stronger, faster and more nimble than most for all the time she spent in physical training but they never saw that. She wondered idly why she'd been more sluggish than usual earlier when trying to murder the man in front of her, but then figured she was just tired.

Hannah Shepard, currently anchored to the ceiling in her Cybran Medium Armour (in the same fashion as a Geth Hopper clung to ceilings), with active camouflage enabled (this meant that shield reactivation from popped would take much longer), was observing carefully. She knew full well that she could easily give Tali the stature she wanted, since maybe this wasn't such a good spawn cycle for a match after all. If she decided it was too dangerous for James, a few easy fixes later and Tali should be gone home, unlikely to return in the near or even fairly distant future, and everyone would be happy. She knew full well (courtesy of Commander T'Soni informing her of certain exceptions to the rule) that no matter how good the match was, there was the chance that it would fail to bloom due to extenuating circumstances. This edition of James, however, was a good negotiator, and eventually got Tali to head down to breakfast and relax a bit. Hannah went back to her room almost completely hidden from view and then, after sorting out some stuff and eavesdropping on the chatter downstairs, came out with her helmet stowed away as usual, dressed as usual in her matte black armour with red highlights. "Well, it's good to see all of you up. James, you should handle your paperwork before you do anything with Tali, remember."

"What sort of paperwork?" Tali asked as she ate the food on the plate John put in front of her. He had volunteered to cook today, since according to him last night, James had more work to do. Tali on the other hand was more worried about the "do anything" part of what the other woman had said.

"Being a son of our city's Founder means I need to administer certain districts of the city, at least their paperwork. I also need to go out to inspect the services and such occasionally. Mom oversees everything, but she likes to keep us working." James replied. "We could go out to the beach or some other part of the city after I finish my work."

"Working hard is usually good for the soul." Tali agreed, her worries about the afternoon diminishing slightly. By this point she was feeling a little guilty inside for trying to kill him that morning, "By the way, I'd like to apologize for what I did this morning, it was… I completely lost control, I woke up and realized that the past month wasn't just a nightmare…" She bowed her head, shuddering as she remembered how horrible the realization was.

James' hand was halfway to clapping her on the shoulder in a gesture of everything being okay when he realized that was probably not so wise given she hated physical contact, particularly by human males. Hannah was watching the entire exchange through her peripheral vision and was really glad she'd mostly repaired the bruised tissue Tali had gotten earlier in that scuffle mere minutes after it happened with her armour's medical suite. She'd done it over some time and left some residual discomfort so Tali didn't find it too strange that her breasts were all of a sudden completely fine. Even though she'd started it, there was no doubt to Hannah that Tali would resent James, however little, for her pain should it be more than an irritation and linger for more than a couple hours, as she'd stop really _thinking_ about the incident after that. As for the finger marks on James' neck, they should fade quickly enough, by Hannah's scan readings. Though she was no expert, Commander T'Soni had persuaded Doctor Chakwas to upload a lot of medical data, some of which were of questionable origins (i.e. the Commander supplied them), to her ACU, to, as the "old war machine" (her own term for herself) put it, "fulfil history". After a hard glare from his younger twin, John decided to keep his mouth shut about the bruises and just eat his breakfast instead.

* * *

><p>Later, while James was going through his paperwork and Tali was reading a library book using special reading glasses that allowed her to read whatever language the book was written in, she suddenly realized something. "James, do you have a moment?" She really didn't like being babysat, but at least this was somewhat better than before, though she was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.<p>

"Sure, just after I finish reading this particular report." It took less than a minute for him to wrap up "What did you want to talk about Tali?"

"How can I understand you? Clearly, whatever language you're speaking is different from what I'm speaking."

"A very good question, Tali, it's all here." He tapped his ear and showed her what looked like a small device that was moulded around his ear. "My mother gave me and John these things so we'd understand you, check your own ears." She felt at her ears and found similar devices fitted on each ear, so light and snug she didn't even feel it most of the time "That translates what we're saying into your language, which I believe is called Darnassian, and allows all other sounds through."

"Well, that clears that up." Tali went back to reading her book, but remembered she wasn't wearing her new reading glasses after she realized she was looking at gibberish. The magic used here was quite comprehensive, she thought, and it probably tapped into the mind of the wearer to obtain language information and to translate text into the main language the user preferred to read in…

In reality it was a much simpler technological device, which scanned the words of each page and the pages immediately preceding and after it to create a sensible translation into Darnassian, which was projected on the inside of both lenses where the original words were blotted out. This created some cases of Tali looking at only half a page of Darnassian writing, or a block of writing stretching longer when viewed through the glasses than the page length, so that page numbers would match up between the languages, but it was tolerable. As for what powered the device, it tapped into the energy feed grid permeating the city, in Coalition-style fashion. Even though most of the city ran on wires as per their actual technological development level, the main power supply, in the core of the city, for those wires was to Vespene Gas combustion engines roughly as the Forbidden City of Beijing was to a rock. Hannah was doing her best to create a civilization that would advance on its own and become something worth meeting in the future, though she'd need to keep an eye on the to make sure they didn't surpass the Coalition (an astonishingly tall order, but it was still a risk she wasn't going to take).

"So, what's your home like?" James asked as he read through another page. There was very little information known about Night Elven society, though they had some knowledge from the legends the High Elves had. Those elves, back on the continent of Lordaeron, were descended from an ancient race across the sea to the west, a race whose description matched the Night Elves.

"Nordrassil, the World Tree as we often refer to it, meaning Crown of the Heavens in our language, stands many thousands of feet tall and is very important to our civilization. It is large enough that a significant portion of our main city lies on its branches and boughs, and so our capital is named for it." She chose not to reveal that it was the source of her people's immortality. That would be bad if the humans decided to try to destroy it.

Notably, the former was actually not an accurate claim, the main thing Nordrassil did was exude a psionic waveform elevating situational awareness and reaction speed for Night Elves and other closely related species. This meant that the usual reasons for death of genetically immortal people i.e. accidents and statistics catching up with them, were barely, if at all, applicable. Combine that with magical self-defence (including momentum dampening, shock absorption, etc.) which is greatly boosted in a certain range of the tree (all Night Elves but the most mind-blind can subconsciously determine how much they are being boosted and react accordingly), and it was natural to assume that Night Elven immortality came from the tree.

"I have never heard of a tree so large… it would be an impressive sight."

"Well, I grew up in it, so it doesn't seem as impressive to me, but yes, it is magnificent." Tali said with a dreamy smile on her face.

James looked up and smirked "you really want to go home, don't you?"

Tali rolled her eyes "For what I hope are obvious reasons, yes. I would prefer to spend not a moment more with you humans."

James was frowning at his document before reaching for a piece of note paper and writing on it "That's natural and understandable. You can leave after Mom gives you a clean bill of health, tomorrow morning."

Tali turned the page, again, with a grin "You're rather eager to get rid of me, aren't you? Why don't you just let me off now? It's fairly early in the day, and I don't think there have been any skirmishes in the past few days or even weeks, so I don't think the Sentinels are going to be too aggressive." _Next thing you know I'm going to be called a Sunstrider…_ She thought amusedly. _It's weird that the humans are active in the day, while we are creatures of twilight, when we don't look as different as could be. At the very least, their taller members overlap in height with our shorter ones and we have the same basic anatomy…_ Her smile faded as she remembered the practically identical reproductive structures and beauty standards of both species and the implications thereof._ We are far more similar than I would have liked._

"Well, it's not irritating to have some good company to chatter with, usually I'm too occupied to socialize much except for expected functions, it's not that easy running even a city-state without delegating that much. Add to that the fact that Mom is trying to keep this city the only one with our technological capabilities and it gets a lot more complicated." James finished his note "one moment, I need to make a phone call…" He picked up his phone and started dialling.

Tali waited while he spoke with the person on the other end of the phone, it was an interesting device to say the least, allowing long-distance communications, and she wasn't even sure if it was technological or magical. It seemed this city focused more on technology than anywhere she'd ever been. Well, that was obvious given Nordrassil was very much nature-based and magical whereas this place had a lot of glass, stone, and other artificial constructions. Something told her this was a place of opportunity, but it was not the sort of opportunity that was for her. Most important was the fact that it was full of _humans_, and she really did not like humans, particularly human men. The only reason she was putting up with this James Shepard guy sitting on the other side of the office behind his desk was because it was only for one more day and the fact that he was probably more polite than most of her own people were toward her. Being so short she was "almost deformed" and completely magic-blind meant people tended to pity her or look down upon her.

* * *

><p>After finishing off the stack of paperwork he had been given (and a couple other attempted conversations with Tali on her homeland, though she was rather tight-lipped), James went to grab some lunch, completely unnoticed by Tali. Her eyebrows were raised enough to be visible even above the large book she was holding in front of her face, with her pointed, moveable ears perked up in interest. It was a book about steam and internal combustion engines, and had examples in the form of the surface railroad system and subway system (which was to be replaced by electric trains in the next few years according to Hannah Shepard). She'd initially put it before her face so she didn't have to be reminded of the unpleasant fact that she was in a room alone with a human male for hours on end, but now that was no longer an issue.<p>

It remained a non-issue until James came back with two big plates of food, he pushed one onto the desk between her and the book in front of her, with fork and spoon already included, and took the other plate over to his desk. "Thanks." Tali said with a glance at him "smells delicious, John's really good at this."

"Too bad you're not hanging around for a few more days, then you could sample my cooking too." James said without thinking about it "Anyhow, I'm free for the rest of the afternoon, what do you want to do?"

"I'd like to stay here and read as much as I can before I leave." Tali said between mouthfuls, eating and reading at the same time and not looking up from her book.

"Alright, then I guess I'll do some more reading too… It's remarkable how much stuff Mom put into this city, how many inventions. People are still catching up as they immigrate, but we expect new inventions to mostly come from them after a few more years." James stated as he scooped up some of his own fried rice and popped it into his mouth. She hummed absently in agreement to that.

* * *

><p>"So you are telling me that your leader's husband, Malfurion Stormrage, has ANTLERS?" Hannah heard James exclaiming in his office. She was monitoring practically the entire city with her mind, her programs and her many subroutines. After all, the mind is a supercomputer beyond any other, as exemplified by the Asari race's ability to assimilate genetic material and run a full-lifetime simulation in mere hours of any potential offspring's genetic mix to screen for favourable additions from their mates (though participants in a Union find it to appear much shorter to them).<p>

Hannah was therefore not too surprised at the fact that Night Elven psychics sufficiently attuned to nature (i.e. genetics and biochemistry) could assimilate certain useful adaptations unto themselves (though not unto their children), including defensive features like antlers, claws, etc. After all, after knowing of some of the incredibly genetically modified humans and human-related species living in the galaxy, this was far from ridiculous. Honestly, phasing out of harm's way, firing beams of what amounted to negative enthalpy, teleportation, using triple-barrelled rotary arm cannons, firing controlled particle cannon beams, jumping buildings in a single bound… yeah, THAT was madness.

Well, back to the present instead of dwelling on the future, it was interesting how they encountered Tali before Liara again, maybe it was a trend of some sort. However, she noted how once she'd finally given up on the idea of people being responsible and built a series of markers in the north to stop people from wandering into Ashenvale Forest, there had been no skirmishes with Night Elves for the past three weeks. Tali really did have bad luck this time around given she was taken in just about the last skirmish to occur. Well, Hannah felt things would take a turn for the better before long, as Tali seemed to still be a tech-head, being interested in the books about technology that occupied one wall of James' office.

As it turned out, things did not take a turn for the better. The next morning, Tali was obviously beginning to have some second thoughts of leaving the vast expanse of knowledge she'd just discovered, but, when seeing her off near the border of Ashenvale Forest (clearly marked by many, many large stainless steel signs), there were nasty complications. She'd looked back twice over her shoulder as she left them, though she didn't know why she suddenly wanted to be back with those books. She'd only read a few books before falling asleep—at night time, which was surprising as she was still not adjusting back to a normal Night Elven sleep schedule—and there were many more begging to be read, so many more things she could learn, but it wasn't worth the price of being with humans… and she'd probably be kicked out soon anyhow. The large vehicle they were sending with her was standing by, waiting for her to fetch some Sentinels to guide it and its many tons of cargo through the forest without doing too much damage.

She took another step after turning her head back around and felt a pressure around her temples. Tali frowned, taking another couple steps as that increased to a throbbing pain in her head. Another couples steps later she was breathing hard, was she being cursed or something? She didn't detect any injuries on her person after all… She stumbled forward a bit from the pain and fell to her knees as more pain cascaded over her.

"Crap, something's happening." Hannah said rather loudly as she and her younger son (John was back home handling paperwork) ran over to the young woman gasping for breath "Tali, what's wrong?"

Her head wasn't hurting anymore "What? What did you DO to me? Did you put some sort of curse on me or something?" She growled in anger.

"No, we didn't do anything… damn it, I need to call Samara." Hannah slapped a hand to her forehead "James, Tali, into the truck, we're heading back to the nearest outpost to pick up Samara. I forgot to do a check for any curses or residual magic on you after picking you up" She grabbed the magical calling device that she had for a direct link with Samara (having decided people here needed to invent cell-phones for themselves) and waited for the other end to pick up "Sam, we have a problem, Tali's suffering from pain when she walked too far away from us, can you be at Outpost Six as soon as possible? Bring Garrus, he should take a look at her too in case there was something only their people know of." She cursed at herself internally for not remembering this world had psychic abilities being used just about everywhere unlike the mostly-technological world she'd grown up in, in her past and the universe's future.

"Okay, we'll be there in about an hour." Samara replied. The outposts were, after all, about 120 kilometres from Hearthome City, a considerable distance by medieval standards but easy to manage via the express subway (one stop per 40 kilometres) and slower surface train system, which stopped every ten kilometres, with trams stopping every two kilometres. Usually, for short distances, people just used cars and trucks to get around, but if they were going long distances i.e. into town or several fort transit lines over from where they started, they'd usually take the transit system, be it the radial one or the circuits that connected the radial spokes. The city's food supply was more than enough to feed itself, and most of the population, even in the outpost villages, concentrated on more industrial endeavours.

Tali was still fuming when Samara arrived, at the fact that she'd been painfully cheated out of going home. After a number of complicated diagnostic charms, Samara discovered that there was a curse on Tali, bound by blood, that would prevent her from leaving a radius of twenty metres of a human without suffering pain, which would grow debilitating by twenty-five meters at most. The curse was designed to kill if she left a forty-metre radius of a human, and had been activated when the mage in question was executed. Because it was bound by a death, it was extremely complicated to break. Samara's words were "I would not advise trying to break it, this sort of Dark Magic tends to leave victims insane or dead if broken. Besides, the curse's duration is only five years from what I can detect, that is a very short time to your people given your indefinitely long lifespan. After the duration is over, you'll be able to go anywhere you want again."

"The only thing I want to do right now is to go home." Tali grumbled angrily.

Hannah smiled "Don't worry, Tali, you will still be able to go home, James will accompany you."

"Mom, have you lost your marbles? That's SO dangerous…" James protested.

"I have to agree with your son, Lady Shepard, it is very dangerous for any foreigners to enter Ashenvale Forest, and you can forget going into Nordrassil. It would be more practical for me to tell the Sentinels to tell my parents that I'm still alive and have chosen to remain with you to learn stuff."

_So she does care, good, the Tali I knew from the future was always a caring girl, it seems she doesn't change much through the spawn cycles._ Hannah shrugged "That's like Garrus."

"Garrus? Garrus Vakarian?" She got a closer look at the man hanging around some distance away. He, like her, was a descendant of one of the old lineages that went all the way back to when, according to legend, the Night Elves came from the stars. He'd gone off adventuring a couple years back and sent home a letter a few months ago saying he'd gained the position of Environmental Consultant in Hearthome City. It was something his folks had hardly been happy about, but relations between Hearthome and the Kaldorei were officially neutral, so it wasn't much of a big thing, though it was still considered incredibly embarrassing for the Vakarians.

James nodded "Yes, Garrus Vakarian, also a Night Elf, but a man, he works for us as the Environmental Consultant. If Hearthome grows any larger in territorial holdings, he'd be the Environmental Minister since we'd no longer be a city state by Mom's standards. He's probably John's best friend other than me."

Tali frowned, remembering what she'd read of the eastern continent's kingdoms, across the sea "But don't you guys have larger territorial holdings already than some of the Eastern Kingdoms do?"

The border signs of Hearthome City extended in a circle twenty kilometres past the circle of the outpost forts, in other words, given the walls of the city itself were in a semicircle a full twenty kilometres across (very little of which was actually occupied) and the outposts centered on a circle eighty kilometres from the walls, the territories it held firmly under its control made a half-circle with a radius of one hundred and ten kilometres, which was larger than some of the kingdoms in the east. Hannah pretended to be rather surprised Tali had read that book given she seemed more interested in tech than anything else, maybe she just wanted intelligence data to give to her people. "You read that book? Yes, we are larger than many of them, but we are still too small in population to be upgraded in terms of classification."

"Huh, well that's true, Hearthome has fewer people than many places significantly smaller than itself…" Tali stated, then frowned since she had only done a cursory look through that particular book before putting it aside on another book about the orbits of the planets and how stars worked. That meant she didn't remember altogether that much

Hannah had of course observed Tali over scanners with a couple subroutines and scanners the previous evening and recalled the books she had read, the portions of each read, and the time spent on each. It had taken mere milliseconds for her Cybran circuits to conclude that Tali couldn't possibly remember enough to really have that much of a bargaining chip since she'd moved on way too fast "Well, I guess you could stay with us and maybe with Garrus for the next few years, it would be highly unusual otherwise for a Night Elf to be seen in Hearthome, people have gotten used to him, and also don't question most things the ruling family does, and since you need to stay near a human to not suffer or die, maybe James should be responsible for keeping you from hurting too much?

"I sincerely hope that this twenty meters, however far it is, is longer than twenty feet, since I didn't feel a damned thing when I was sleeping in the room across the hall from all of you, and that was definitely more than twenty feet." Tali stated shakily, realizing that if it was the same as twenty feet then she'd have to sleep in the same room as a human male, which would probably mean a lot of insomnia.

Hannah grimaced inwardly, she had been clung onto the ceiling face-down for the whole night running scans and slowly repairing the deeper damage Tali had sustained, just as she had the previous night. If magic could see through her disguise, then no, she was no further than twenty feet from Tali. However, twenty meters was a much easier distance. "No, it's about sixty-six feet, if your unit of feet is the same as that of the Eastern Kingdoms." Interestingly, as Hannah already knew but pretended not to know, it was, apparently the damned Monitor of this world liked consistency, maybe even a little bit too much. According to the scans she had of Nordrassil, the alternate, less elf-like form that Elune assumed on occasion (as portrayed in the sculptures) could only be one thing, one thing that more often inhabited the second world this particular monitor had to take care of, Earth II. The question was, how did a silvery/golden/lavender plated crescent-shaped flying combat platform assume a humanoid construction, however synthetic that construction might be? That was something Hannah was interested in finding out with good time.

Another interesting reveal was the vast number of installations covering the surface of the much larger, further-away moon of this planet, the one the Night Elves referred to as Elune. It appeared this was once a primary Forerunner communications relay and a very important system, but the moon had been stealthed and silenced with the war ongoing and finally turned into a large archive with backups of most nearby sentients' data in case the shields of the world below failed. The problem was that with only that kind of combat platform ready to defend this planet in addition to a few home-grown implements of war, this world would be hideously vulnerable to the sort of forces the Reapers would send. They would send the Burning Legion to partly deal with technologically backward worlds to keep them down long enough for each harvesting to be manageable and sustainable.

However, since the future was known and set from what Hannah knew, this world would survive the Burning Legion, hopefully at least long enough for contact to be made. The only question was, where would Hearthome City be? Nothing in the video games around year 2000 AD that had depicted Azeroth in what would even then _still_ be the very distant future had ever mentioned a technologically advanced civilization. During the events depicted in the games (which would occur several millennia later) Hearthome should be producing, by Hannah's estimate, at least orbital-bombardment capable space-based battleships. That would mean Hearthome would have to be relocated sometime to somewhere else completely, but they would cross that bridge when they got there. Of course, the natives would make up all sorts of lore about how Azeroth was the only world to successfully resist the Burning Legion, and in a way that was true, mostly as they'd never even tried going near Earth II and the Reapers eventually consumed most other planets they used the Legion to keep down, as they usually only used the Legion on a race once before consuming it on the next harvest cycle.

Now, Samara had just cast several shielding spells on James before Hannah sent him with Tali into the forest a short distance to try to get the attention of some Sentinels. When she'd said that "this looks like a good spot to try venturing in" it was because of her Spook-class Spy Planes picking up Night Elven bio-signatures a short distance within the forest monitoring them. Sure, Night Elven stealth was good relative to the other races, but they couldn't do jack against even the most rudimentary Coalition tech level sensor suites. Tali couldn't believe her luck and James was happy he only had to dodge two arrows before she managed to talk the Sentinels into standing down.

They of course gave him plenty of death threats even though she'd phrased it as "I was cursed by some of my captors, but fortunately this young nobleman, after saving me from them, has agreed to give me the proximity I need to not suffer from the effects of the curse."

There had been questions raised by Tali's use of the word "Quel'dorei", as that referred to the High Elves as they called themselves, but that was soon cleared up and the Sentinels agreed to deliver the message. As they left, one of the few Sentinels that were actually friendly with Tali commented that "It was about time she found someone her own size to take to bed."

Someone else commented in disapproval while Tali's ears blushed purple and James pretended he hadn't heard a thing. Most humans wouldn't have, but his hearing had always been far better than average "She's way too young for that, Lia."

She sighed and shook her head amusedly "What few friends I have tend to be a bit too concerned about my life at times…"

"That's what friends are for. Yes, I am aware of the cheesiness of that statement, but—"

She had frowned at him before interrupting "What's cheesiness?"

* * *

><p>Regardless of that, Tali was silent for the subway trip back to the City, and shut herself in what had been her room for the last few days and would now continue to be her room. It was obvious she was pissed as hell, even though she was not quite inclined to attack any of the handful of humans who'd actually been nice to her. James thought she needed some time alone to cool off before they could do any damage control. Hannah merely patted him on the head with an armoured glove and told him she was glad she had taught him how to properly handle things. She knew full well that Tali would more than likely use this "trapped for five years" thing to distract herself from how tainted she probably felt given her past experience, and it was best for her to be distracted thus. Otherwise, she'd be having a lot more difficulty trying to deny it all the way she had more or less denied it all for the last two days she'd been kept for healing.<p>

The first thing that Tali did when she re-emerged from the room and actually spoke to someone was to ask James "This is not a dream, is it?"

"No, it's not, listen, Tali, I'm sorry that things didn't work out, let's try to make the best of—" he trailed off as he saw her bloodshot eyes "Tali, were you… of course, sorry, I was being insensitive again."

She pushed past him with a snort "You didn't do anything, really," Some residual anger in her compelled her to add bitterly "you didn't do anything about it, not enough snap inspections it seems. Anyhow, you're right, it isn't a dream, it's the worst nightmare that I've ever had in my life so far." She laughed humourlessly before going down to the kitchen where she offered to help out with the food. If she was going to be stuck here for five years she might as well do something to not go insane… right? She didn't know about the not-insane part, because she suspected she was already a little off the deep end.

Things around Hearthome City would grow a lot more interesting over the ensuing years, that was for sure. Hannah could almost sympathize with the young Night Elven woman who was probably older than she herself was subjectively, being stuck somewhere (or some-when) REALLY sucked. The difference was that Tali was stuck for five years at least, and if James hadn't tempted her into falling for him in that time then this spawn cycle was a hopeless case and he existed only to prepare for something further down the centuries (according to a certain Commander in the extra data she'd found in her ACU storage after getting blasted back through time, this was in fact possible). Unlike Tali, Hannah was stuck in what was to her practically ancient history for thousands of years of objective time, which meant at least a decade or two of subjective time even if she put herself in the highest safe form of time dilation i.e. one where she could still monitor the external situation with any reasonable reaction rates even given Cybran data-crunching power and speed.

* * *

><p>AN: Mostly filler and showing just why Tali had reacted so numbly in the previous chapter regarding her reality. She's still doing the denial thing, understandable given just how bad being gang-raped repeatedly is for one's mind. However, this brushing aside will have very sad consequences when it comes to any physical intimacy for her in the future.

Sorry for leaving this story for so long, the thing is that it's not critical at the present time to update this one. Besides, the events here occur at a much slower pace than in my other fics, especially the actual SupCom events, whereas the pace of life in Hearthome at the moment is like that of the late 1800s and is accelerating steadily.

Did the amount of control Tali exhibited over the matter make sense? I hope so… Night Elves, even when young, tend to be rather wise and try not to shout too much, right?


End file.
